For you, not me.

As is custom, yesterday I got the chance to sit with two other folks who work on their relationship to money. We met in the monthly group of three to hear and discuss and provide suggestions and feedback to one of the group. It was this woman’s first group like this, she being new to addressing her vagueness and impulsiveness around money.

And I got the melodious chance to see how far I’ve come since I sat with a similar group of two strangers almost 3 years ago.

As I watched her discomfort, shame, panic, and hopelessness, it reminded me of how I was when I sat in that first group. I hated that I had to seek help around money; I already spent plenty of time in groups about alcoholism, now I have to do it about debt, scarcity, and … (dread) abundance?

I came to that first small monthly group with my numbers tallied from the month before, my income and expenses. I came with my mounting student debt, my checking account bouncing along the bottom, my credit cards bouncing along the top. I came with starvation in so many areas, and I was so sure they were going to tell me to cut more, since my income was not meeting my expenses.

Instead, what they told me was that I was living in deprivation, and needed to increase the amounts I was spending in certain categories of self-care (clothing, entertainment, food). They told me that my needs weren’t too great to be met; that I needn't be ashamed of actually needing more.

It was horrifying! It was so uncomfortable to be validated that I wasn’t living too big for my britches, but have no idea how to change the income side. At the time, I was barely making ends meet with temp jobs, and felt I was doing all I could to get out of the hand-to-mouth hole. But I was powerless, I was desperate, and I listened to these two who said, We believe it will get better for you; it has for us.

Things didn’t really begin to change for me until last Spring when I began working one-on-one with a new woman I’d admired from those groups. For whatever reason, things didn’t really change when I’d worked diligently with the first woman I’d worked with.

When I started again with J., at one point, she told me that I needed a car, and I would get one. SCOFF!! What?? How? What money? Me? No….

I didn’t believe her in the slightest. At all. But, I did believe that she believed, and that was enough. She said, I needed a car to get to band practice, to get to auditions, to get to work, and it would happen for me.

And, as you now know, last October, maybe 6 months after her proclamation, it did. It’s not a beater car, an “underearner’s” car, it’s not a jalopy. In fact, it is the exact make, model, color, mileage and price I’d hoped to get. Seriously!

I didn’t “come into money.” I didn’t stop buying clothing, or going to the movies. I just kept showing up to groups and meetings and writings like the folks I saw get better do. And things changed.

I know the woman yesterday thinks we’re full of shit, just like I did. I know that she thinks to herself, "Yeah, maybe for you, but not for me," just like I did.

But, with my life as evidence, with one credit card paid off, my $90,000 student loans in repayment (slowly), with food I want to eat in my fridge, and most importantly, with the specter of "I'll never get out of this; I'll just kill myself" long faded – if it can happen for me, it can happen for her.

And if the course of one year of real change can produce what it has, maybe I no longer feel the same militant resistance to where else abundance wants to enter my life. (Maybe.)